


The Ear of a God

by NervousAsexual



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Anxiety, Dawnguard DLC, Dawnguard spoilers, Family Feels, Grief/Mourning, Illnesses, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2019-10-16 14:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17551460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: Vyrthur was once a very different man, before he was betrayed by more than the dwemer.





	1. Chapter 1

Knight-Paladin Gelebor brought word to him that the snow elves had finally fallen, that the survivors had sought shelter with the Dwemer, and his first thought was of the initiates. For the sake of the others he prayed that even in their subterranean refuge the survivors would be able to feel the warmth of Auri-El, but his first silent, barely thought-out prayer was to ask Auri-El to bring comfort to those initiates still attached to their circle on the outside. They were young, ill-prepared for the realities of war. He worried less about the clergy; they knew that Auri-El would provide. All the same he knew how fortunate he was that the only family he had was here, safe in the sanctuary. When next alone with him he hugged Gelebor for a long time.

"May Auri-El's light guide you in your darkest hours," Gelebor told him, and though it was something he'd heard many times before Vyrthur thought he detected a note of finality in his brother's voice.

More initiates than ever before completed their journey through the wayshrines. It seemed the destruction of their race, customs, friends, and family was enough to drive them into the arms of Auri-El. Vyrthur was sorry this was what it took. Initiate after initiate appeared for an audience, only to weep in his arms at their loss.

Vyrthur too mourned the loss of so much history, but always was Auri-El present. He heard the quietest tears shed by the lowliest initiate in their bed at night. Vyrthur prayed that they would realize this, and that the warmth would bring them comfort.

When he was alone he spoke with the divine and it calmed him. His anxiety had always been his weakest point, but his faith and the love of a god carried him through it. Always he thanked Auri-El for allowing him to carry on this small part of snow elf civilization. Always he asked him to protect those who had been driven underground.

Some time into their forced seclusion a skeever infestation destroyed a sizable portion of their food stores and Vyrthur joined with the lowest clergy to drive them back. It only made sense. What use was he to Auri-El if he thought himself too important to involve himself in the day to day?

"You should use the bow of Auri-El," Gelebor told him that day in his chambers, laying a hand on the artifact's display case. "The initiates would enjoy seeing it in use."

Vyrthur declined. No, he preferred to fight with his magic. He knew the real reason Gelebor suggested it. With a bow Vyrthur would be back and out of danger. Vyrthur appreciated the thought, but it was important to fight alongside the pilgrims.

He was much older than the others who fought, and the others rarely spoke to him. Perhaps it was strange to them to see him outside the temple. One, only an initiate himself, complimented the frost cloak Vyrthur summoned. It was much easier to fight skeevers, he said, when they were chilled and slowed. Vyrthur thanked him, but in fact he preferred ice magic not because of any combat benefit, but because he was often sore--it came with age--and the ice cloak dulled the pain in his muscles.

Eventually the skeever were eradicated, but there was always a price for such things. A number of those who'd fought contracted rockjoint, and Vyrthur was among them.

Gelebor visited him in the temple as he lay in bed, his stiffened joints creaking and groaning, and brought a dose of a potion made from the burnt remains of the skeever.

Vyrthur waved him down. "Be sure the initiates get their doses first."

"There is enough to go around."

He could feel the icy anxiety threatening to penetrate the warmth of Auri-El. "You are sure?"

"I am."

With a sigh he relaxed some of the tightness in his body. "Very well. Leave the potion and I will drink it later."

"And you will drink it?" Gelebor smiled at him. His brother knew him well. "You won't wait to be sure none of the initiates will go without?"

"They are my responsibility."

Gelebor put a hand on his shoulder. "And you are mine."

He laid his own hand over his brother's. "Please."

A shadow of sadness passed over Gelebor's face. He didn't speak. Neither of them needed to speak. The anxiety had always been a part of him, would always be a part of him, and not even Auri-El could change that. He'd come to terms with that long ago. Anxiety and compassion were so often two sides of the same coin. He was who he was because of it.

"All right," Gelebor said at last. "I'll return when the initiates are cured. Will that make you happy?"

"Very much so."

"Then so it will be, my Arch-Curate."

When Gelebor left him he slept. For hours and hours he slept. He awoke certain he had heard Gelebor calling for him, but the mer who entered the room was not his brother. He shifted up onto his elbows and in the darkness saw an initiate. They had met fighting the skeevers. This was the one who had complimented his magic.

"Arch-Curate?" the initiate asked. His voice trembled.

"Yes," Vyrthur said. "What is it, my child?"

The initiate stepped closer. "I... I'm sick."

"Many of us are. The clergy will be bringing you a potion to cure the disease."

The initiate dropped his eyes to the ground.

"It won't help," he said softly.

Vyrthur felt a familiar empathy. The anxiety that was a part of him was evidently present in this boy as well. "I know it feels that way. But Auri-El will provide."

But the initiate shook his head. "I don't think Auri-El is listening anymore."

Vyrthur closed his eyes and could still feel the warmth of Auri-El around him. "Fear can make it seem that he isn't. I've struggled with this too. But it will pass."

"It won't."

He gestured to the potion Gelebor had left on his bedside table. "Drink this. It will help."

"I'm so hungry."

Odd, Vyrthur thought, opening his eyes slightly. Their psychological reaction to the outbreak was much the same, but the physical reaction differed wildly. Rockjoint had sapped any appetite he'd had. "Perhaps you are healing on your own."

"I tried the other initiates, and the prelates. Everyone is busy with the injured."

"My job is to help you in any way I can. It is alright, child."

"It's not," the initiate said, "but thank you anyway."

And the initiate, who was so young, who shouldn't have been more than an adept in any school of magic, struck him with a paralyze spell.

He was too weak with rockjoint to resist and it knocked him back onto the bed. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, could only lie still as the initiate's hands glowed red and an otherworldly mist reached deep inside him and drained the life from his body.

_No_ , he thought. _Please, please don't._ But words were beyond him. In his mind he prayed to Auri-El. Desperately he sought the warmth of the divine, but it was gone. He could no longer feel it. He could no longer feel anything.

The paralysis lasted no more than ten seconds but it was enough. The initiate fled, and Vyrthur closed his eyes and prayed. It was like speaking to the void.

Some hours later Gelebor returned. As his eyes fell on the untouched potion still on the bedside table, he shook his head.

"Everyone has had their turn, Arch-Curate," he said. "Drink up."

But there was no strength at all in Vyrthur's body. He wept.

Gelebor cursed. "I knew you should have been cured hours ago." He sat behind him and cradled his head and pressed the uncorked bottle gently to his brother's lips. "Come on, Vyrthur. You need to drink this."

Vyrthur drank as much as he was able. He forced himself to hope--if he just drank enough of the potion, perhaps it would be enough for a cure.

In his heart, though, he knew. For once his anxiety spoke the truth. There weren't enough magical potions in the world to cure some one infected with Sanguinare Vampiris.

Gelebor stayed at his side through the night and as Vyrthur faded in and out of consciousness he waited for the realization he knew was coming. The pallor in his skin would give him away, or the glow of his eyes in the dark, and Gelebor would understand. But the night passed, and then a day, and as the hours wound down Gelebor did nothing.

In seventy-two hours it would be irreversible. He would be fully vampiric. He couldn't bear to think of himself like that, draining the blood of who knew how many of his brethren before finally being put down like a rabid animal. When Gelebor at last left to tend to his own duties Vyrthur crawled to the shrine of Auri-El and laid his cheek against the cold curving stone, and he prayed. He prayed to be cured, or to die, or for permission to take his own life.

There was no answer.

When the seventy-second hour passed he felt it. He felt the last remnants of his life slip away and he knew that Auri-El had turned his back on him.

He could not understand. He was the Arch-Curate, and Auri-El had always answered his prayers before. Even when his prayers were denied he had felt the warmth and comfort of the divine, but now he felt only emptiness. He remained in his chambers and prayed and prayed, but still there was nothing.

He might have prayed forever had the Betrayed not invaded the temple. They swarmed the chantry, destroying all they encountered, and they came to Vyrthur's chambers expecting perhaps a soft old man. But Vyrthur's strength had returned and he forced them back with wave after wave of ice.

When the last of the Betrayed and the monstrous creatures that fought with them were frozen he allowed himself to lie down in his bed. All around him were the frozen forms of the monsters, and as he looked at them he realized what they were.

The Betrayed were snow elves. Blinded by hate, driven mad by the consequences of their deal with the Dwemer, they had come here to destroy because it was all they knew.

This was the despair that broke him.

Auri-El had turned his back on his people. Vyrthur was the Arch-Curate, yes, but only one man. If it had saved the snow elves Vyrthur would gladly have accepted Auri-El's decision. But the Betrayed were many, the entirety of a once-prosperous race, and Auri-El had allowed them to be turned from the light.

So many transformed into these monstrosities. So many dead. He saw in his mind the initiates he had cared for slaughtered like cattle, and he wept. He thought of Gelebor, killed by those he had once striven to protect, and his grief turned to spikes of ice around him. What had once been love for Auri-El turned to hate.

"Then let it be so, my Arch-Curate," he repeated to himself, seeing Gelebor again in his mind's eye, and again he wept.

With his cloak of ice still around him he wrote the prophecy that would become the Tyranny of the Sun. _The blood of Coldharbor's daughter will blind the eye of the dragon_ _._

Let it be so.


	2. Chapter 2

For centuries he waited for vengeance. The hatred built inside him as the years passed by and he wished there were another way, a way he could take back a life for a life. But how could he hope to kill a god? So Vyrthur waited, his bow at his side, for the blood of a daughter of Coldharbor. Perhaps he couldn't kill a god, but he could blind him. An eye for an eye.

When first he saw Gelebor at a distance, his heart danced. His brother still lived! It was almost enough to drive him back from the prophecy. But as he watched he saw that Gelebor had taken up the duties of a prelate as well as a Knight-Paladin. He still tended the wayshrine of Auri-El.

For the first time since his transformation the anxiety took hold of him. Was this some kind of trick? Was Auri-El attempting to draw him out, only to burn him away in the sunlight? He couldn't be sure this was Gelebor at all.

But as he watched he recognized too much in Gelebor for it to be a coincidence or trick. His brother lived, and he still served Auri-El.

Rage surged within him. Gelebor must have seen the Betrayed. He must have recognized them, as Vyrthur had. He had to have known that Auri-El had allowed this to happen to them. And yet he still served him?

"You blind fool," he said, bitterness choking his heart. Of course he didn't understand. Gelebor only saw what he wanted to see. He had watched his own brother succumb to vampirism and recognized nothing.

Vyrthur returned to the temple balcony and did not look back.

The temple fell to ruin around him as he waited. He allowed it to do so. He no longer wanted to stand on the balcony and take in the sight of the Vale. The sunlight hurt him too badly. He would wait for a daughter of Coldharbor and he would pierce the sun itself. Only then, when Auri-El could no longer reach Nirn, would he leave the temple.

Eras passed, and finally a mortal brought a daughter of Coldharbor. He watched them approach, felt them pass wayshrine after wayshrine, and he felt... tired. Tired, and perhaps a bit sorry for the vampire, for Serana. Even at a distance he could see she was struggling with her very nature. He understood that. It had been a long time since he had felt whole.

For the first time in centuries he let the Betrayed and their monsters break free of his icy spell. He didn't need the daughter of Coldharbor alive. He only needed her blood, and he had no need at all for the mortal. He let them fight, wasting their strength on monsters weakened by centuries of exposure, and brought the ceiling crashing down upon their heads.

It took more out of him than he had planned. In his mind's eye he saw Gelebor, still tending to the temple as if it would be again filled with pilgrims. This had once been his home, and he felt tears in his eyes as he destroyed it.

The vampire moved easily through the collapsing ceiling and struck out at him with magic of her own. Electricity struck him hard, burning at his flesh and draining away his magicka. Fine. Let her fight back. He would make her understand, then, the way the snow elves had been betrayed.

He fled to the balcony, weakened by her magic, and looked out across the Vale. It had been so long. He burned in the sunlight, but... it felt almost good. Almost like being held by a divine. Almost like something he'd missed so dearly.

"Enough, Vyrthur," the vampire said to him as she climbed the stairs to the balcony. "Enough."

"How dare you," he scoffed. He would sooner die that let her and her mortal companion ruin centuries of work. "I was the Arch-Curate of Auri-El, girl. I had the ear of a god."

Her voice betrayed no emotion but disdain. "Until the 'Betrayed' corrupted you. Yes, yes, we've heard this story before."

For a moment it froze him, and he couldn't understand. What story? What corruption? And then, as he turned and his gaze fell upon the mortal limping up the stairs, he understood. Even after centuries Gelebor's weakness was still his blindness.

"He is an easily manipulated fool." He was closer to his revenge than he had been for centuries, and yet he felt more exhausted than exhilarated. "Look into my eyes, Serana. Tell me what I am."

She looked into his eyes and he saw himself reflected in hers, the glow of his eyes reflected in the darkness of hers.

"You..." she said. "You're a vampire? But Auriel should have protected you."

To hear it from another was almost a relief. It proved he had been right all along. He should have been protected. This shouldn't have happened. "The moment I was infected by one of my own initiates Auri-El turned his back on me. Gelebor calls our brethren 'Betrayed,' does he? Does he know who it is that betrayed them?"

Neither the vampire nor the mortal answered.

He thought of the initiates who had died here and felt so tired he could barely stand. "I swore I'd have my revenge, no matter what the cost."

"You want to take revenge on a god?"

He turned his face up to the sun and though it hurt the light was comforting. "Auri-El himself may have been beyond my reach, but his influence on our world isn't. I had half of what I needed, and now here you are."

"It... it was you? you created that prophecy?"

He reached out. She was so close he could have taken her blood now. But she fought back, shoving him away, and her friend, the mortal, jumped in front of her as if to shield her.

There was rage again, but not the kind he'd expected. He had spent centuries working up to this. Now he had to see it through. "Centuries of preparation will not fall to ruin because of you."

He could see it in the vampire's eyes that she didn't want to fight. "Just surrender and give us the bow."

With a sigh that gripped his entire body he cast the cloak of ice over himself. He just wanted this to be over.

"Death first," he told her, and they fought.

The vampire was weakened by the sun, the mortal by the collapse of the ruin. He cut at them with everything he had, every drop of magicka, every bit of enchantment, every punch and slice he could throw, and still it wasn't enough.

He wished it were different. He wished the snow elves had never fallen. He wished the Betrayed had never invaded. He wished his brother had been at his side when it all fell apart. More than anything else, he wished he could still feel the embrace of Auri-El.

This was not what he wanted.

Tears blinded him as he fought. He was like a lost child, trying to make sense of the nonsensical, trying to stand himself apart from a parent whose love he needed more than anything.

He was already crying with the vampire drove her blade into his chest.

He put a hand on hers, barely understanding, holding the blade against him. Slowly he sank to the ground, turning his face back up to the sun.

Through the blood in his throat, he whispered, "Auri-El, forgive me..."

As the last of his life drained away he was grateful. He could feel nothing but peace.


	3. Chapter 3

_Apocrypha_  

 

 

Shattered pieces of black soul gem rained down around him. Shards on his skin. The deafening whip of a soul escaping its prison. The taste of blood in his mouth.

_As the sun ends the night and the darkness of this soul_

_Return life to this creature you see before you_

A dagger in his chest and a hand on the wound, and, when he opened his eyes, the warm sunlit glow of magic.

Pain--the anxiety--all coming back to him. Couldn't raise himself from the ground. But the magic held back the tide of pain and fear. Restoration. A spell he'd felt once before, in the aftermath of a battle long forgotten: a healing spell.

It was impossible as he was. Vyrthur raised his eyes beyond the glow of the magic and found beside him Knight-Paladin Gelebor.

Instead of words he coughed up warm flowing blood. More confusion. Gelebor looked down at him and said, "Don't speak."

Instead of the sun-warmed balcony he lay in the shadow of a wayshrine. Instead of stone his head rested against something strong but giving.

His head, on Gelebor's lap. An arm around his shoulder and a bare hand in the midst of the magic, pressed to the wound in his chest. Clutched in Gelebor's free hand was a tattered scroll, the words all but illegible.

_May Auri-El's warmth imbue you with strength._

Another memory, buried deep under the centuries of strife. A fear--of the dark? of what waited within it? of death itself?--and a sleepless night. Two brothers. The one comforted the other, let him rest with his head against his shoulder, and found it smoothed the edges of his anxiety.

Now, eras after, the other held the one and he did not know why. He did not deserve forgiveness.

He coughed a small spatter of blood and the magic sank into his chest. The wound closed. Gelebor drew his hand away.

It shouldn't have worked, Vyrthur thought, trying to get up and collapsing instead. Restoration magic--healing magic--did not work on vampires. The anxiety came flooding back. Was this all just the final hallucinations of a dying mer? Was this a punishment? Was...

Gelebor's hand brushed his cheek, and tears spilled down his face.

"I'm sorry," Vyrthur mumbled to him. "I... I've destroyed everything."

Gelebor smiled and let the tears fall as they would. He shook his head. "It was destroyed long before that."

That was impossible to believe. He had spent centuries consumed in ice and hate. He'd written the prophecy that could plunge the world into darkness. He had turned his back on the god to whom he'd devoted everything he ever was or would be. He'd let the vampirism consume him and said not a word to his own brother.

"If I had known--if I had seen..." Gelebor let go of the scroll, too faded now to read, and let it drift to the ground. "But I didn't. Of the two of us you've always been the one who saw most clearly."

The words sounded like a cruel joke. Vyrthur did not see clearly. He only saw his own fear, unfolding forever in all directions. Perhaps that was why Auri-El had abandoned him; perhaps the gods had no use for one who saw only the ways things could go wrong. Perhaps his descent into the cold hell of vampirism was all that he deserved.

But here, impossibly, in the shade of the wayshrine, he felt the warmth of the sun. The endless ache inside had dulled. It wasn't possible.

He took into his hand a shard of crystal, emptied of the soul trapped inside. "What have you done?"

"A gift," Gelebor said, and touched his fingers to the shard. "It was a gift from a friend. I never dreamed that it would work, Vyrthur."

Then it was true. After all this time there was a cure. His hand tightened around the shard until he bled.

A cure that required a soul.

"Filled in the soul cairn." Gelebor spoke as if he knew Vyrthur's thoughts. "The pieces of souls too broken to be spared. No one died for this. This was worth the cost."

It wasn't. He could not believe it was.

"Your life is worth this."

How could one single life be worth this? How could his life be worth this?

"All this time I thought it was the Betrayed that took you from me. I lost you long before that."

The emotion in Gelebor's voice brought tears to his eyes. It would have been better for both of them, better for all of the mortal plane, if he had been lost.

"If there is a price to pay for this I will pay it. None of this should have happened in the first place. I... I failed you, my Arch-Curate.

A sob tore through him. A searing pain passed through his chest and was gone.

"One of your own initiates. I watched you turn and I did nothing." Gelebor turned away.

"Nothing you could have done."

"I could have stayed with you."

For a moment each turned toward the other, and their eyes met through the tears.

"You should not have had to go through this alone."

That should not have made a difference. He was--or had been--the Arch-Curate of Auri-El. He should have had faith enough to carry him through. And yet he could still remember how much he had wanted his brother near when he had changed. In the hundreds of years hence that want hadn't faded at all.

"I can't undo what has been done. If I could go back, stop this from ever happening..."

Bleeding, crying, lost in the now unfamiliar warmth of the god of the sun, Vyrthur took his brother's hand. There was nothing either one of them could say. Everything was broken beyond repair. And yet... wasn't that what he'd seen when he looked at himself? A godless vampire, who would rather die than give up his prophecy?

Still here he was. Mortal. Wrapped in warmth (magic or Auri-El? What difference was there?). Holding the brother he thought he'd long since lost.

His anxiety had fooled him before into believing things were destroyed forever, and had done so long before the prophecy, before the Betrayed, before the initiate, before even the fall of the snow elves. And yet every time he let himself be fooled, the world kept going.

He'd done it before. He would have to do it again.

Gelebor's hand tightened imperceptibly on his.

He would do it again, and by some miracle he wouldn't have to do it alone.

_May Auri-El's radiance fill your heart with joy._

Perhaps joy was too much to expect. It didn't matter. Here, now, he would make do with hope.


End file.
